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There's a new skill that colleges are looking for in their applicants. Perhaps you've heard of it.

It's called talking.

At many colleges, the importance of the interview is creeping up, in part because speaking to another person — as opposed to "how r u? i'm gr8!" — is becoming an ever more artisanal skill. My friends and I keep joking that if you want to make a killing, offer a class for teens called "how to make a phone call."

Even the chattiest of us may experience a moment of hesitation before picking up the phone to initiate a conversation. But for kids, that activity is even more alien. They don't have any positive associations with phone calls the way we adults do from back in the day. In fact, I think my teenage sons' only association with phone calls is picking up because it's me. Not a buddy. Not a girlfriend. Not that fun.

So colleges are keen to hear what their applicants have to say in a one-on-one interview. Are they engaged? Engaging? And is the real kid anything like his essay, grades and scores?

"Kids are so much better-prepared than they had been in the past," says Eric Allen, founder of Admit Advantage, a college consulting business in Silver Springs, Md. They go to test prep for their exams, and many get help writing their college essays, too. They even know to beef up their extracurriculars. "When I was going to school, volunteering in and of itself was unique," recalls Allen. "Now you have to have saved several lives and traveled to Africa." And even that's getting trite!

Moreover, says Susanna Cerasuolo, a Seattle-based college counselor and founder of CollegeMapper, "recommendation letters can all start to sound the same." All that's left to differentiate one wonderful student from the next is what they're like in person.

Which is not to say the interview is the most important ingredient in an application — only that colleges understand the same thing employers do: It's a way to discover the person beyond the resume and numbers.

And colleges are worried about their own numbers, too. "Colleges really push for these interviews because they want to see, more than anything else, the fit," says Ibrahim Firat, president of Firat Educational Solutions in Houston. By "fit," he means whether a student will fit in on campus socially, academically and — to be blunt — realistically. College rankings are based in part on what percentage of the kids who get admitted end up matriculating. (At Harvard, for instance, the rate is 76 percent — second-highest in the country, after Brigham Young University.) No one wants to admit a kid who's ultimately going to go somewhere else. It makes the rejected college look like sloppy seconds.

So in interviews, as much as a college is finding out about a student's hopes, dreams and "Star Wars" bobblehead collection (I'm sure some of those kids make great college material), the interviewer also has to find out, "Is this one ready to bite?"

Ready or not, wise is the student who appears as eager for that college as a job applicant for that chicken plucking job: Sounds great! I hope I can be worthy. When can I start?

Of course, to sound that way, it's a good idea if the kid has had a conversation with some adult before the big day.

And by "conversation," I don't mean text.

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